


Employee of the Year

by Kanthia



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Bad Ending, Depression, Gen, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-14 23:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10546408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kanthia/pseuds/Kanthia
Summary: Something had seemed off about the new farmer from the beginning.(a conversation by a lake, near midnight.)





	

Just before dawn Shane’s phone alarm plays that fucking Joja Cola jingle, serving him two unpleasant reminders: first, that Morris’ text from the previous night was neither a joke nor a hallucination; and second, that despite the questionable legal angle, Joja Corp hacked his phone and set his alarm for him. He’s at least eighty percent certain he didn’t set an alarm, and even if he did, he’d have picked a sound that a normal person could stand listening to at five thirty in the fucking morning.

As it stands he’s expected at the _mandatory pre-opening meeting_ , so he rolls out of bed and is immediately, upon assuming the vertical, hit by a wave of nausea. His mouth feels like something furry crawled in and died there. He’s straddling that uncomfortable line between still drunk and hungover, and if he doesn’t get something into him quickly he’ll have the full-on shakes by the time he gets to work.

It’s a crisp fall morning, if anyone fucking cared.

Morris is having a row with Liz, the head teller and union rep, by the time Shane arrives at the warehouse. She’s going on about overtime pay and Morris has a copy of their contract out, gesturing at the section that deals with _Mandatory Volunteer and Self-Betterment Programming_. Liz is already on thin ice for requesting a stool for her till, since she’s pregnant. No doubt she’ll be out on trumped-up charges by the end of the week.

Then Morris is on Shane’s ass about the state of his uniform and the state of his smile, and Shane’s downing the last of his breakfast, his fuck-it’s-too-early-for-this-shit special, a can of Joja Bluu. It tastes like shit. Probably the sorbitol. He crushes the can against his leg and flashes Morris that winning Joja Corp smile, which seems to placate him enough to get his mind back on their task at hand: taping some shitty plastic banners and balloons to the warehouse.

Morris has Shane up on a stepstool which, if he knew Shane’s blood alcohol level, is not such a good idea. He’s contemplating quitting for the millionth time when Morris shouts that _he’s coming_ and _everyone get in line, that’s right, big smiles because Joja Cares (™)._

Down from the carpenter’s place to the north, with a confused expression on his face, comes the farmer.  


* * *

 

Something had seemed off about the new farmer from the beginning. There’d been all this buzz in the Stardrop about some new kid taking over the old farm north of the Cindersap Forest, the mayor grandstanding about how this was going to revitalize the town and bring in some fresh spirit, Marnie getting her hopes up about new homes for her cows. Shane had been let down too many times in his life to bother putting faith in anyone, but had half-heartedly joined in the toast to a new friend.

The farmer arrived with the fresh scent of spring, introduced himself in a hurry to everyone like he was being chased, spent every last penny in his wallet on cauliflower and potato seeds at Pierre’s. Those first few days of spring it was not uncommon to catch him fishing through trash cans for loaves of bread or half-eaten lunches.

Leah, who lived just south of the farm, was quick to judge. “He’s an ass,” she said, over beers at the Stardrop. “I stopped him as he was rushing home from Pierre’s with a sack full of seeds, tried to say hello, asked him what he’s hoping to get out of the farm -- you know, small talk. He looked at me like I was an idiot and told me he was here to make money.” According to her he spent most of his waking hours tending his vegetable garden or -- as Robin could corroborate -- in the mines north of town, speaking to townsfolk only when he needed something from them, a tool’s capacity upgraded, or more seeds to expand his increasingly aggressive monoculture.

“I asked him to find an axe for me,” Robin added. “He brought it to me the next morning, waited impatiently for a reward as though he was only helping out for a bit of extra gold.”

Marnie’s mouth is turned down at the corners. “He’s not interested in raising chickens. Maybe my prices are too high?”

Pierre has no idea what to do with the seven billion potatoes the farmer had sold him.

Elliott had seen him a few times, harvesting clams and coral down by the beach, always in a rush; the farmer had set a crab pot, but promptly forgot about it.

“He bought a Joja Mart membership,” Lewis said, into his beer. “I’m selling the community centre.” And that was that.

Shane, who’s spent his life being about as useful as a square wheel, didn’t share a word with the kid through the spring, or the summer. He did notice him in the Joja Mart every now and then, handing over fat stacks of cash and signing on the dotted line. Whispers were abound in the break room that he was running a meth lab and selling his product through Morris, until they were called on for some midnight Self-Betterment Programming to fix up the broken minecarts and Morris started saying shit about pilot projects.  
 

* * *

 

The old community centre was converted into a warehouse, and when Morris realized that overhead was a thing that cost money and employees, the warehouse became a trash heap. Lewis seemed pretty fucked up about it at first, but life went on as summer worked its way into the fall, and a fuckton of potatoes made way for a million pints of blueberries. Shane drew a long straw and got out of all-night Self-Betterment on the Calico Desert bus. Had to help fix the bridge to the quarry (and worked a twelve hour shift the next day), but a team of high school students looking to fudge volunteer hours -- sorry, ‘interns gaining valuable hands-on experience through Joja Cares (™)’ -- came in from the city to fix up the farmer’s old greenhouse.

That same farmer came in to Joja Mart on a blustery fall day smelling of soil and iron, handed over another pouch of coin and turned to go on his way. Morris clapped him on the shoulder, and though Shane was supposed to be keeping himself busy mopping up a spill he caught most of the conversation, the congratulations, the firmly shaken hand, the farmer looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. When he finally left Morris announced a new Self-Betterment Project on the boulder by the mine entrance, and though Shane was home by midnight, thoroughly trashed, he was unceremoniously woken at three in the goddamn morning by a text announcing the six o’clock sharp meeting by the warehouse.

So Shane survives the morning by glaring daggers at the farmer as Morris says some shit about revitalizing run-down infrastructure and gloats about a promotion. The farmer withers under his glare, or under all the attention. Is he shy? They give him a t-shirt. He poses with a giant cheque for photos. He slinks off to the south, towards the beach.

Shane can’t shake the thought of the proceedings all day, the painted smiles, the posturing, the cheap vinyl banner, the broken balloons decorating the ground afterwards. When Morris lets him go at six it’s a godsend, so as he’s walking home from the Stardrop he has an honest, but not quite an earnest, wish for a quick and painless death.

The farmer’s sitting on the edge of the dock by Marnie’s place, fishing.

“Hey,” Shane calls, because six-drink, ten-PM, honest-but-not-quite-earnest-wish-for-death Shane likes to talk to strangers. “Y’know that pond’s just full of trash, yeah?”

When the farmer doesn’t answer Shane dips into the cottage to grab a cooler because seven-drink Shane is miserable, and misery loves company.

“Hey,” he calls again, ambling down the dock. The farmer has two buckets set up, one of fish, one for trash. He’s sitting with his feet in the water, concentrating hard on the end of the line; it bobs, and he tugs hard, fishes up another can of Joja Cola. How many cans have been dumped in that old pond, or in the river? There must be seven in his trash bucket. Shane whistles. The farmer makes a high, shrill noise, jumps at least two inches off the ground.

“Shit, didn’t mean to scare you.” Shane sits down, sets the cooler down in between them. “Sorry.”  
  
“I’m, uh, sorry -- I don’t think I got your name.”

“Shane.”  
  
“Damien.”

It’s the first conversation they’ve had since the kid moved into town. Shane pops open a beer, takes a long pull. “Congrats on whatever it was we were congratulating you on today.”

The line bobs again. They sit in silence as the farmer reels in a smallmouth bass, and with a practiced motion unhooks it, hooks some more bait fished out of his trash bucket, and casts again. “I used to fill spreadsheets for a living,” the farmer -- Damien -- says.

Shane has half a mind to remind this kid that he has no interest in hearing some stranger’s life story, but six-going-on-seven drink Shane’s a little terrified by the overwhelming silence at night, and is happy to have someone fill the void.

“I did inventory management,” the farmer continues, when Shane says nothing. “Sat at a computer all day doing, y’know, cost/benefit analyses, that kind of stuff. I don’t even know where the place was, whether it was a store or a warehouse. The person on the other end just inputted numbers and I crunched ‘em.”

“You got tired of it.”

“Yeah, and grandpa left me the deed to the farm. I thought I would give a big _fuck you_ to the system, gave two weeks’ notice, sold everything and burned the cash.”

“Nice.”

“And then I got here, and, uh.” Damien falters. “Well.”

“You want a beer?”

“Yeah.” He takes the offered can, sets down his fishing rod. Fumbles a bit with the pull tab. Takes the small and cautious sip of city folk who don’t know how to drink to forget. Shane decides that for all of Lewis’ sighing, for all those days Marnie spent by her till with no-one looking to buy chickens, he can’t quite bring himself to hate the kid. Hating takes too much energy. He’s decidedly neutral about him.

Then Damien takes a longer drink, wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve, and says: “Do you believe in magic?”

“No.”

“I mean, me too. Then the Mayor, Mayor, uh --”

“-- Lewis.”

“Mayor Lewis, he takes me into the old community centre, says he’s going to fix it up, and there was this _thing_ , I swear to _Yoba_ , this _thing_ at my feet, like a little…” He motions with his hands, makes a sphere about the size of an orange. “...And it had little legs, and little arms, and it -- well, there was a scroll, and the next day I got a letter from the wizard inviting me to his tower.”

Want to see a sad and broken man? Ask Pierre who Abigail’s father is. Har har, bit of small town humour.

“So I go there, and the wizard tells me all this stuff about, I dunno, forest spirits, makes me drink out of his cauldron.”

“You make a habit of drinking out of cauldrons?”

“I just -- listen, I had all these weird visions, thought I could hear the trees talking. Then I come down and the wizard is telling me that I need to appease the forest spirits by bringing them stuff from my farm. I went and bought my Joja Mart membership that evening.”

Shane sifts through his memories. Yeah, the farmer had seemed a little out of sorts that evening in the spring, but he’d seemed out of sorts the entire time he’d lived in town. “You freaked out.”

They sit there in silence for a few long moments, Damien looking utterly miserable. He fishes up a trash bag. “Morris said, y’know, he said for a small fee he’d fix up the town. New pilot project. Seemed better than trying to appease the spirit of the forest with bundles of horseradish.”

So he did what he did best: fired up the old computer Robin had left him, made some spreadsheets, compared seed prices, ran cost/benefit analyses on chicken coops. Figured if he planted this many cauliflower seeds in the spring, and that many blueberry seeds in the summer, making allowances for random expenses, he’d be done by mid-fall -- factoring in the size of the greenhouse and seasonal availability of certain fish. There’d been a bit of a hiccup with Joja Mart being closed the day of the egg festival, but he’d made the time up by unearthing a vein of diamonds in the mine the next day.

“It felt nice.” Damien pauses to sip at his beer. “Like for the first time in my life I was actually contributing to something, doing something meaningful. I threw myself into it, and now, well…”

They gave him a t-shirt.

“And a free can of soda a day, for life.”

There’s a long and awkward pause, and then Shane, despite himself, snorts; the whole situation is so fucking absurd, the tiny magical creatures, the wizard, a farmer from the city selling a million pints of blueberries to get high school kids to fix his fucking greenhouse in the middle of the night, the idea that you can buy meaning at your local Joja Mart. He’s laughing, a good belly laugh that hurts. He can’t help himself. Damien giggles, guffaws, chokes on a mouthful of beer, spews warm ale into a lake Joja Corp regularly uses as a dump.

And finally, when they’ve quieted down, Damien sighs, then casts his line again. “So here I am,” he says. “I keep telling myself that I did the right thing, but I get this feeling like I might have fucked everything up.”

“You can’t chase Joja Mart out of town with wizard shrooms.”

“Mm. I’m just…” Damien stops, lets his shoulders sag, stares out over the lake. “The hell am I supposed to do tomorrow morning? Water my cranberries? Drink my can of Joja Cola like there’s -- like there’s a fuckin’ -- like, there’s any reason --”

Now there’s a familiar bedfellow, something Shane knows all too well. Lets itself into your head like a friend, promises to make you see the world for what it is, and then makes everything look like shit instead. Keeps you awake all night with nothing but the comforting thought that you’re always free to throw yourself off the nearest cliff. Gets you through shifts trying to figure out if you’d do more good for the world as fertilizer.

Hell if he has any answer for the kid, though. Jesus, he almost feels bad for him, sitting alone with a pile of money and the realization that he’d tried to get away from a shitty situation only to open the door and let it right back in. Surprise!

“ -- I didn’t do anything wrong.” There’s something in Damien’s voice that is less a statement and more a question, a search for acknowledgement, a kid in an unfamiliar situation who made a snap judgement in the heat of the moment, and now there is no going back.

“Toast, then?” Seven-drink Shane holds up his beer. Damien turns and a whole litany of emotions run across his face, shock, guilt, all the way to acceptance. Holds up his can. “To running away.”

It tastes bitter.

“And to not quite making it.”

**Author's Note:**

> While prepping for my Member of the Year run I found this discussion thread on Steam, a new player was wondering whether to do the bundles or side with Joja Mart. Someone responded arguing that the Joja route is far better because of how much easier and faster it is -- all you need to do is plant a billion blueberries and bam, roll credits in ten hours and move on with your life.
> 
> (find me, as always, on [tumblr](http://kanthia.tumblr.com/))


End file.
